But don't we live in a time when we are told that what we are is more important than what we do? Jordan Peterson tells young men they can’t effect social change until they’ve made their own beds, cleaned their rooms, and eaten their vegetables. Robin DiAngelo insists that we cannot make the world a more just place until we flog the secret racism from our hearts. These new gurus fall on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but each of them preaches that we must look inward for salvation. They tell us that if there are few points of contact between what we find inside and what we see in the world, well, to hell with the world. It’s what we *think* that counts.
I happen to believe the opposite. You don't become a good person by holding the "right" opinions; you become a good person *by doing good things.* Nobody cares about your motives.
Yeah, I would say that what those two philosophies have in common, as well as the Christian fundamentalism I grew up with, is a fixation with the self: self improvement, personal salvation. That is important, but sometimes we need to stop thinking about whether the charitable things we're inclined to do make us good people, or good enough people, and just do them.
Quite a dream. Reminds me of a sci-fi short story that I'd read many moons ago -- possibly 50 in Playboy (when one could read it for the philosophy ...). It described some dystopian future -- an isolated community of some sort, the Nostromo perchance? -- in which some rescuers had found that the inhabitants had died while hooked up to their virtual reality machines and had died of starvation because they had forgotten to eat -- and how to live.
Reminds me too of some scientist commenting about evolution, about how adapting to the environment can be a trap -- when it changes we may no longer be able to change with it.
As a new school year approaches, I find myself wrestling once again with the question of how I can help young people build resilience and reduce their fragility. I’m also on the warpath against the use of AI to supplant one’s own thinking in people who haven’t yet learned to think very clearly and critically on their own (university undergraduates, and my classrooms).
I plan to hold discussions on day 1 of our relationship to technology and the purposes of education (beyond workforce preparation). I hope to use this to raise questions about how they relate to one another in their personal lives, too, and encourage them to get offline far more. Ideally, they will come up with ideas on their own so I’m not just a Boomer talking at them.
I’ve already begun rolling back some of the pandemic-era flexibility, having seen that too many of them use it to get into endless anxiety spirals. They do each get one free extension on a paper as long as they approach me before it comes due; this reduces the need for me to vet excuses and also approximates how it works in the post-school world.
If anyone reading this has andditional ideas about how to encourage resilience in adolescents (and in ourselves!), please do share! For me, a big piece of it is getting into our bodies and connecting with other people and with the natural world, as Shannon has also suggested. Another piece is to show them how they have power beyond what they believe. Yet another is to scaffold them toward taking greater accountability.
I love it! Thank you for your important contribution.
I'm especially worried about AI too, and have been pondering another article about it. I did one on its responses to image generation prompts, which was troubling enough, but I think its “conversational” aspect is even more concerning.
Yes, yes, yes! All we have are our bodies and reality; the entire trans movement is no more than dystopian science fiction imposed on the bodies of children.
"In today’s modern world, many people appear to think that bodies are so yesterday and relatively unimportant in the vast scheme of life as we know it. Virtual appears to be equal to or even superior to real life, but virtual reality is not actually reality, it is a pretend or “almost” reality. Even hard-core gamers need to eat, pee and sleep every single day to function over time." https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/you-who-do-not-know-how-the-mind
But don't we live in a time when we are told that what we are is more important than what we do? Jordan Peterson tells young men they can’t effect social change until they’ve made their own beds, cleaned their rooms, and eaten their vegetables. Robin DiAngelo insists that we cannot make the world a more just place until we flog the secret racism from our hearts. These new gurus fall on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but each of them preaches that we must look inward for salvation. They tell us that if there are few points of contact between what we find inside and what we see in the world, well, to hell with the world. It’s what we *think* that counts.
I happen to believe the opposite. You don't become a good person by holding the "right" opinions; you become a good person *by doing good things.* Nobody cares about your motives.
I also think Jordan Peterson's concern is somewhat different than how you've characterized it, but he has kinda lost the plot recently so idk.
Yeah, I would say that what those two philosophies have in common, as well as the Christian fundamentalism I grew up with, is a fixation with the self: self improvement, personal salvation. That is important, but sometimes we need to stop thinking about whether the charitable things we're inclined to do make us good people, or good enough people, and just do them.
Those thoughts were on my mind when I wrote these:
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/identity-and-doing-versus-being
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/ranting-is-not-activism
Quite a dream. Reminds me of a sci-fi short story that I'd read many moons ago -- possibly 50 in Playboy (when one could read it for the philosophy ...). It described some dystopian future -- an isolated community of some sort, the Nostromo perchance? -- in which some rescuers had found that the inhabitants had died while hooked up to their virtual reality machines and had died of starvation because they had forgotten to eat -- and how to live.
Reminds me too of some scientist commenting about evolution, about how adapting to the environment can be a trap -- when it changes we may no longer be able to change with it.
As a new school year approaches, I find myself wrestling once again with the question of how I can help young people build resilience and reduce their fragility. I’m also on the warpath against the use of AI to supplant one’s own thinking in people who haven’t yet learned to think very clearly and critically on their own (university undergraduates, and my classrooms).
I plan to hold discussions on day 1 of our relationship to technology and the purposes of education (beyond workforce preparation). I hope to use this to raise questions about how they relate to one another in their personal lives, too, and encourage them to get offline far more. Ideally, they will come up with ideas on their own so I’m not just a Boomer talking at them.
I’ve already begun rolling back some of the pandemic-era flexibility, having seen that too many of them use it to get into endless anxiety spirals. They do each get one free extension on a paper as long as they approach me before it comes due; this reduces the need for me to vet excuses and also approximates how it works in the post-school world.
If anyone reading this has andditional ideas about how to encourage resilience in adolescents (and in ourselves!), please do share! For me, a big piece of it is getting into our bodies and connecting with other people and with the natural world, as Shannon has also suggested. Another piece is to show them how they have power beyond what they believe. Yet another is to scaffold them toward taking greater accountability.
I love it! Thank you for your important contribution.
I'm especially worried about AI too, and have been pondering another article about it. I did one on its responses to image generation prompts, which was troubling enough, but I think its “conversational” aspect is even more concerning.
Whoa
Yes, yes, yes! All we have are our bodies and reality; the entire trans movement is no more than dystopian science fiction imposed on the bodies of children.
"In today’s modern world, many people appear to think that bodies are so yesterday and relatively unimportant in the vast scheme of life as we know it. Virtual appears to be equal to or even superior to real life, but virtual reality is not actually reality, it is a pretend or “almost” reality. Even hard-core gamers need to eat, pee and sleep every single day to function over time." https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/you-who-do-not-know-how-the-mind